Who would have thought that creating a fake profile on MySpace (a violation of their user agreement) could lead to a criminal conviction? The recent verdict in the case of Lori Drew concluded that she was guilty of computer fraud for doing just that. Of course the verdict was influenced by the belief that the email messages sent under the false identity contributed to a girl’s suicide, and certainly gave the impetus for the criminal charge.

Let this be a warning to information researchers and investigators who are collecting data on subjects through their social networking sites.

As part of my investigations I do passive information gathering on the Internet, like monitoring MySpace sites. Other investigators have asked me if they should create a profile to become a “friend” of someone who has a private MySpace page in order to get access to the full site. Before you do it you better be tech savvy so you can cover your footsteps.

Like with any other investigative action keep in mind: Is this legal and ethical? How would it be perceived by a jury? Will this be detrimental to the overall case? Are there unintended consequences that may reflect badly on my client?

In the past few years, general circulation newspapers have furthered the cause of government transparency by providing searchable databases of government employees and their salaries. Although these are federal, state, county and municipal government public records the corresponding government agencies have not made these available at their Web sites. Government agency Web sites sometimes post a staff list or employee directory — not salaries — with name, telephone number and email. Often, school districts don’t list staff beyond those in the top level administration, but school sites that have their own Web pages may have a staff and faculty directory with names of administrators and teachers. An example of a very flexible school staff and teacher directory is hosted by the Ventura County Office of Education. Search by district, school or employee last name to find the district, school site, job title and phone number (Internet Explorer, only). I’ve endeavored to compile links to all of the government pay databases hosted at newspaper sites on a page called Government Pay.

The disadvantage of the separate databases is you have to know which one to search in order to verify your subject’s employment. The beta site, myDanwei, is a nascent attempt at a cross-agency compilation of government employee names, salaries, job titles and departments. Select the link,
National public employee salary database, to search by partial name, county, state, agency or institution. There’s only one search box, but you can enter a combination of keywords. The words (without quotation marks) “physician santa clara” will return a list of doctors who work for the County of Santa Clara, California. The extent of the coverage becomes apparent with various queries. The keywords “Weir Idaho” doesn’t return any records, but “Weir Washington” results in a handful of names from Washington State agencies. Just enter a state name into the search box to find out if any data is included from that location and from which government departments.

MyDanwei doesn’t identify its sources and this description of the utility isn’t very enlightening.

MyDanwei, Inc. is a pioneer of developing the next generation organization, people, salary, and job information searching and data mining platforms. We are inspired to provide our users with easy and accurate information about a person or an organization, such as salary, education background, past employments, key employees, job positions, etc. Besides one of the most comprehensive databases with millions of records of organization, people, salary, and jobs, our website also features state-of-the-art user interface, where everyone can freely add, edit, discuss, tag, and rate all records about people and organizations around the globe.

The search box on the myDanwei home page can be used to access minimal information on some private and public companies. Again, the source and completeness of the data is not identified. These are leads, not confirmations!

How does this site compare with the newspaper government employee databases?

A database of convicted drunk drivers is slated to go online by the end of 2008, hosted by the Ohio Department of Public Safety. Ohio’s SB 17 mandates the creation of an Internet registry listing personal information on repeat offenders. Read the press release that details the characteristics of the Habitual OVI/OMWI Offender Registry.

All offenders having 5 or more OVI/OMWI convictions (or equivalent offenses) in the past 20 years must be listed on the Registry, to include:
• Offender’s name
• Date of birth
• Residential address including street address, municipal corporation or township, county and zip code
• Number of times within the preceding 20 years the offender has been convicted of an OVI/OMWI violation
• Dates of OVI/OMWI violation

The Registry must be made available to the public online, to be searchable by the offender’s name, county or zip code.

Add this to the growing collection of boutique criminal registries.

Northwestern University hosts this searchable database of homicides in Chicago that occurred between 1870 and 1930. The mandatory search field is street name, but many other criteria can be added.

Read the description of this massive project, transferring handwritten records to a digital format.

The Chicago Historical Homicide Project began with the discovery of the availability of a rich log of more than 11,000 homicides maintained consistently and without interruption by the Chicago Police Department over the course of 60 years, from 1870 to 1930.

A search by street name returns a list of records with a short case summary. This image is about half of the data from one of those records.

Public records researchers will appreciate the pop up window of sources for related original documents.

The one change to the database I would wish for is to be able to search by name, but the option to download the data in an Excel file should remedy that limitation.

Formal disciplinary actions against a California Emergency Medical Technician will now be available as a public record, thanks to AB 2917, signed by the governor today.

AB 2917 will provide the public with with certification and licensure information and create an EMT registry, specified by Section 1797.117 of the Health and Safety Code.

The legislation details the personal information that will be a public record, which is similar to that which is available on other California professional licensees.

The information made available to the public through the centralized registry system shall include all of the following data elements: the full name of every individual who has been issued an EMT-I or EMT-II certificate or EMT-P license, the name of the entity that issued the certificate or license, the certificate or license number, the date of issuance of the license or certificate, and the license or certificate status.

The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) issues topical summaries of each year’s state legislation that has become law. The NCSL report, 2008 Privacy Legislation Related to Event Data Recorders (”Black Boxes”) in Vehicles, will help private investigators stay informed of the legal parameters of the application of electronic surveillance and tracking of of others’ movements. Twelve states have passed laws related to event data recorders in cars. Previously, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration instituted a rule that requires auto manufacturers to disclose if an event data recorder is installed, starting with cars produced in 2011.

If you subscribe to PI buzz Alert you may have seen the link I included to UCrime, a crime information mapping site of recent crime incidents at universities. Search by address or date (2008 only) to see reported crimes plotted on a map, with icons distinguishing the type of incident. No names are listed and it’s not clear what the source is for the data, but this may still be useful if you need a snapshot of the criminal activity on any one of about 100 schools.

A site that may be an sister site, SpotCrime provides the same type of interactive mapping for cities and counties.

There are also crime logs and mapping of crimes at the Web sites of universities, university public safety departments and newspapers. The Morehead State University Police Web site has logs of incidents to 2004. This Texas college newspaper has put together a map of campus crimes, while this major daily paper only shows crimes perpetrated in the surrounding community in which students of the University at Albany were involved. A site calling itself UMichCrime gets data from the University of Michigan Department of Public Safety then plots it on a map. Most of the data on these sites are not retained for more than a few years; the Case Western Reserve crime mapping is an exception, extending to 2000. The Boulder Police Department at the University of Colorado plots recent crime incidents on an interactive map.

Find more campus crime maps searching for the words or phrases in the URL: crimemap, map or crime. If you don’t have a specific school in mind try variations on a search query: inurl:crimemap site:edu or campus inurl:map intitle:crime.

All disciplinary records of Arizona government employees become public records September 28, 2008. Arizona Revised Statutes adds section 39-128, Disciplinary records of public officers and employees; disclosure; exceptions.

Release of home address, telephone number and photograph of people in certain job categories (law enforcement) is restricted.

The Arizona Ombudsman produces a monthly educational newsletter, The Public Law. A recent issue offers agencies guidance that speaks to the complaints of private investigators, reporters, and all those who request public records. Read, Public Records Law 101: Avoid the top ten most common pitfalls.

Alaska, Hawaii, Nebraska and Iowa are among the few states that have a statewide ombudsman office.

Does your state have an open records law related to government employee discipline records?

Attorney disciplinary records are organized on the state level and, if online, are usually found at the state bar or state court. The court division that is responsible for investigating attorney misconduct may be called “Office of Disciplinary Counsel”, “Disciplinary Board” or “Disciplinary Commission”. And that’s just one of the many reasons why you should subscribe to a public records directory. CourtPort is one that’s tailored for the legal community.

A directory of lawyer disciplinary agencies can be found at the American Bar Association site. Some of these links go to the bar association’s home page, because that state doesn’t have lawyer discipline records online. Or, in the case of the Alaska Bar Association, the search page is buried and the disciplinary actions are mixed with the general member directory.

The Arizona Bar separates discipline reports by year. If I knew whether the lawyer was disciplined and the year this site would be sufficient. With that annoyance in mind, I developed a Google custom search engine of disciplined attorneys. This enables you to search, for example, the Arizona Bar Association records for all years. Also, search across multiple states at once — helpful if you don’t know the state in which the disciplinary action may have occurred. I include several sites that index appellate and Supreme Court records, which may make the results too cluttered, but will catch some cases related to attorney misconduct claims that aren’t at the state sites.

Not all states are included. Many don’t have directories that could be configured to work with another search engine. Let me know if you find a way to search the excluded sites.

Is the Disciplined Attorneys search engine helpful?

Before your eyes glaze over, your head goes into free-fall, allow me to point you to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) database of insurers who have been in receivership. This newly initiated project to get all state insurance commissioners to supply data on insurance providers licensed in their states, now contains historical data and will expand to include balance sheet information of active receiverships. The strangely named, Global Receivership Information Database (GRID) –since, I think, it’s just national — is “a voluntary database provided by the state insurance departments to report information on insurer receiverships for consumers, claimants, and guaranty funds.”

Information from more than 1,200 receiverships, provided by state insurance departments in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, are housed within GRID. This includes such information as receivership contact information, relevant court orders and docket numbers, ongoing tasks, distribution of assets, claims-liability details, business activity and deposits.

The other NAIS database, Company Search for Complaint and Financial Information, is a search by insurer name, which only provides the states in which the company is licensed and statistical information on complaints. NAIS points you to the state map with links to state insurance commissioners to get details on actual complaints. Problem is, many states don’t have that information at their Web sites, so you’ll have to make a state Freedom of Information Act request.

Texas gives an extensive explanation of the information in their complaint files, provides the records, but in a form that’s cumbersome to use. Their database of disciplinary actions against insurers and agents is searchable, covering 1996-2008.

Does your state have complaints against insurers online?

The Missouri Secretary of State now has a statewide Voter Information Lookup online. Enter the person’s first and last name, county and street name. If you’ve correctly matched that personal information, you have to select the correct street address, as you can see in this image.

Then you’ll get a confirmation that the person is registered to vote.

If you can rely on current voter registration status to verify where someone lives, then this could be useful.

Have you found that the voter registration lookup sites return valuable information?

Background Screening and Investigations: Managing Hiring Risk from the HR and Security Perspectives is a wide-ranging guide to the technology, resources, policies and procedures, and trends in employment screening. A road map for Human Resource decision makers who are screening potential hires and current employees or who are evaluating outside background screening companies, Background Screening and Investigations adds depth to the extensive topics covered, without being overly technical.

The target audience is primarily the employer businesses, not the providers of background check services. Private investigators just getting into the background screening business or those smaller providers who want to brush up on recommended practices and the trends in the industry will also find this a valuable guide. Also, the findings from surveys of the screening practices and objectives of employers is essential for anyone who wants to offer a responsive screening service.

Sandwiched within the essays by over a dozen specialists in the legal, standards setting and metrics, service provider and security/risk analysis arenas are short-hand chapter highlights, and summaries from the differing perspectives of those in human resources and workplace security. There’s a lot here.

Background Screening and Investigations helps employers think through setting screening policies and practices and whether to outsource, as the vast majority do. Niche services and the expected components of a thorough background screening process have expanded with innovations in data collection. This book describes and evaluates the value of various services — those that are standard and others that are not as regularly employed — such as identity verification, drug testing, reference checks, hand-checks of court records and international screening. With the proliferation of resellers of aggregated electronic criminal records the public and employers may be lulled by the myth of a national criminal records database. There is no substitute — in either comprehensiveness or accuracy — for examining the cri